Stuttering is not a problem of speech because it is not speaking that makes us stutter.

Stuttering is not a problem of speech because it is not speaking that makes us stutter. Disclaimer: This is probably not relevant to those who stutter after brain damage. I know when I'm going to stutter. I know that before I speak. It's not the speaking that triggers my stutter. It's rather the lead up to it. Physiologically speaking, stuttering is a fear response that encompasses the entire organism, not just the mouth. Our thoughts become a hell loop. Our eyes escape with no apparent destination. Our stomach and rib cage contract, limiting or blocking the airway. Finally, the mouth follows the forceful shutdown and stutters because it is running on fumes. We stutter with our minds and bodies before we stutter with our mouth. Speaking is not the cause of stutter. It is its only visible manifestation though, which makes us causally link them. I have been recently thinking what is so gruesome about stuttering that fucks with our heads so much. Is it the very act of stuttering? The blocks or repetitions? Is that exactly what makes us judge ourselves, as well as have others judge us? I don't quite think so. I think it's the INVOLUNTARY aspect of it all; our loss of control to an unknown element external of our conscious understanding. It's like a shadow entity comes up to you and tells you: "You're weak. Watch as I make you completely submit to me. Everything you do is futile." Now, THIS implicit unconscious message we receive reverberates not only in our speech, but our entire perception on life too. We become unable to view ourselves as a central actor in our own activity. If our speech gets taken away despite our will, so can everything else. We over-generalize and despair. We feel weak in comparison to others. We enter nihilistic rabbit holes. How many of you are diagnosed with ADHD btw? For most of my life, especially earlier years, I experimented with my speaking in my attempt to turn the involuntary into voluntary. I failed each time, as I reckon all of us have. Let's take stock. What is involuntary about stuttering? The fear. The primal response my body derives in response to perceived threat. Can I calm myself through certain thoughts to reduce this threat? Maybe sometimes, but not in high pressure situations. Okay, I'll let the fear be. Let my body do what it thinks is best for me. The amygdala, responsible for our fight-or-flight response and a range of our emotions, is the part of the limbic system that innervates our neural autonomic networks and functions, such as changes in heart rate. It'd be delusional of me to try and claim control over an autonomic bodily function. So, what is voluntary? Movement of my eyes and breathing. At its core, speaking is essentially a nuanced exhale. What overcomplicates it for us stutterers is our fear response and its trigger - the person in front of us. I have been practicing locking eye contact with someone (direct gaze over averted gaze) and not looking away throughout the duration of an inhale and exhale. Then, I started to apply it to speaking. I lock eye contact. I start speaking. If I'm about to block, I stop while maintaining eye contact (at all costs) and take a breath. When you look away as you struggle speaking, you lose sight of the reality of the person in front of you. Because you don't get to SEE their entire reaction to you and what you're saying, your brain imagines their reaction out to be the worst it has been in your traumatic past. This further fuels your fear and makes you stutter more. When you avert your gaze, you're no longer speaking to the other person. You're speaking to your shame. Further, lack of breath and struggle breathing automatically activates a stress response. To our unconscious body, lack of breath equates death. When you're in a state of panic, depending on the emotional urgency of the situation, your breath starts to occur in fragments, not flow. I take fragments to mean mid-breath restarts at a different pace. As you unwaveringly focus on one thing with your eyes, breathe until you create a flow of breath. Sometimes we mix the both, as a succession of fragments may give the impression of a flow. For a breath to be a flow, it must start and end upon its own momentum, not suddenly interrupted by the start of a new cycle. Flow breathing stabilizes the emotional response. Edit: Addition to the above paragraphs. To recap, my fear response is an autonomic function. It is involuntary. I cannot turn it voluntary. So what is it am I counting on? Through my voluntary gaze and breathing, I am UPDATING the information I receive from the environment, which then signals to my emotional response that the threat may not be as dire as initially perceived. My hypothesis is that if you're able to directly gaze at someone and breathe, then you're also able to directly gaze at someone and speak, as it is essentially the same act. Your limbic system probably fears motherfuckers are about to murder you as it is unable to differentiate human interaction in nuance. Your mind does that when it isn't conjuring the dead past. You don't learn to speak in your path towards fluency. You already know how to speak. You decondition from fear that's an obstacle to speaking. It's still early to conclude anything, but maybe you'll find bits of it relatable or worthy to try out. I am going to keep experimenting and researching. If there's anything substantial to it that I can prove or disprove, I'll make it my masters thesis in my Neuropsychology degree, and perhaps further beyond.